Sundance Courts a New Celebrity Crowd

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Curtis Lepore, known for his videos on Vine, poses with fans at the Sundance Film Festival.CreditCreditKristin Murphy for The New York Times

By Sheila Marikar

Jan. 30, 2015

PARK CITY, Utah — There was a love fest going on inside the publicist Kari Feinstein’s Sundance Style Lounge. Like the dozens of gifting suites that popped up along Main Street during the Sundance Film Festival last week, this one was filled with freebies: leather boots, knitted hats, portable cellphone chargers and, perhaps most outlandishly, a three-night, all-expenses-paid trip to Aruba, valued at $10,000.

Justine Ezarik struggled to take it all in.

“It’s always so weird: They’re like, ‘No, it’s O.K., you can keep it,’ and I’m like, ‘Are you sure?’ ” she said, eyes bright and voice bubbly as she bounced from booth to booth.

Ms. Ezarik, 30, is better known as iJustine, an Internet personality and avid gamer who has more than seven million fans across YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and other social networks. (What made her famous: a 2007 video about her 300-page iPhone bill.) A tweet or hashtag from her could mean hundreds of new followers for a brand and — here’s where the love fest comes in — she’s happy to oblige.

“I love products, and I love sharing if I love something,” she said. “Like, you can probably guarantee that it’s going to be posted, especially if I love it.”

Imagine Jennifer Aniston saying that.

For more than a decade, gifting suites have been a fixture at Sundance and other celebrity-filled events as a way for public relations firms and their clients to get brands in the hands of the famous. Celebrities have been known to walk away with tens of thousands of dollars of free stuff, from leather handbags to bottled water.

Now these swag suites, formerly accessible to A-list Hollywood stars (and, sometimes, D-list reality show ones), actively court social media personalities and their followers. These Instagrammers, Viners, YouTubers, vloggers and bloggers appeal to brands by posting photos of their products, tagging them with the appropriate hashtags like #MooseOnTheLoose (for the Canadian clothing brand Moose Knuckles) and integrating the swag — to use a favorite word — in an “authentic” way.

“Some celebrities, they do the gifting suites all the time, and they want to go skiing, they don’t want to hear about a brand,” said Ally Kemper, the marketing director of Moose Knuckles, which was giving away sweaters and down-filled coats at another suite. “But the bloggers, this is what they love.”

Those social media posts can translate to dollars in a way that tabloid snapshots with a celebrity no longer do.

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Kari Feinstein, a publicist, in her Style Lounge at the Sundance Film Festival, where Internet celebrities pick up free merchandise.CreditKristin Murphy for The New York Times

“When it comes to the sales, the digital girls are making those,” said Tracey Manner, who does public relations for the handbag line Botkier, which was giving away $300 clutches and carry-alls next to the Moose Knuckles booth. “We see higher conversions” — marketing jargon for converting web visits into sales — “off those girls than we do with celebrity placement that we might have paid money for.”

During Art Basel Miami Beach in December, Botkier tapped Marianna Hewitt, a lifestyle blogger and Instagrammer (more than 350,000 followers) to take over its Instagram account and upload photos of her posing with the bags.

“We had one style that was relatively new and we hadn’t seen much movement on,” said Jennifer Maccioni, Botkier’s director of digital marketing and e-commerce. “She took it to Miami and now it’s become the best seller on our website.”

How many social media followers does one need to be invited to a swag suite? There’s no magic number, but the word “engagement” is thrown around a lot, meaning a social media influencer's ability to get followers to like, share and otherwise participate with a brand. Many of the social media personalities at Sundance had millions of followers; others had significantly fewer.

“You have your brand-building girls who, because they look good and they fit the brand, they could have 3,000 followers, but it’s worth getting involved with them and picking them up early,” Ms. Manner said.

Some social media personalities were even paid to show up, with the agreement that they would post something about the gifting suite. Among them was Sophie Elkus of the fashion and beauty blog Angel Food Style, who was paid an undisclosed amount to be at the Talent Resources suite, which has been at Sundance for seven years and is known for its party atmosphere.

For the weekend, Talent Resources took over Blue Iguana, a Mexican restaurant, and set up dozens of display tables. By the entrance, Yellowtail poured wine. In one corner, a ski lift and puffs of fake snow provided an Instagram-ready backdrop.

“I don’t know a ton about movies per se, but I love going to things that I haven’t been to before,” Ms. Elkus said Friday afternoon as she picked up a python-print bag from Botkier, a down coat from Moose Knuckles, CAT boots, two pairs of Vuarnet sunglasses, jewelry from Alex & Ani, sweaters from Superdry and OtterBox iPhone cases. Her haul added up to around $4,500.

Mike Heller, the chief executive of Talent Resources, said there were no strings attached to the stipend and that Ms. Elkus was free to post whatever she wanted in the interest of “keeping it organic.”

“That’s important to us,” he said, “because I want to keep the integrity of what she does.”

Under the “Dot Com Disclosures” guidelines from the Federal Trade Commission, social media personalities are supposed to disclose gifts and payments they receive from companies. But enforcement is unclear. People who violate the rule can be fined, though the penalties are not clearly defined, said Jonathan Zittrain, a founder of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard. “There’s a lot of discretion in enforcement action as to what the F.T.C. can do,” he added. “It usually begins with a letter, and there might be a fine.”

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Olga Kay, a YouTube star, shows off shoes she got as a gift at the festival.CreditKristin Murphy for The New York Times

And few, if any, of the social media personalities who rummaged through the gifting suites of Sundance mentioned that they got those boots and down-filled jackets free.

(“My new @botkier crossbody bag,” Ms. Elkus wrote on Instagram. The post included the hashtag #TRSuites2015, but didn’t mention that the bag was free.)

More often than not, the Instagrammers and YouTubers were too busy taking it all in. Back at the Talent Resources suite, Benny Fine, 32, and his brother, Rafi, 30, whose YouTube comedy channel, Fine Brothers, has more than 11 million subscribers, looked around like kids on Christmas morning.

“It’s our first experience with something like this,” Benny said. “You hear about these things, and you’re like, ‘What are they?’ And then everybody’s so nice, so sweet.”

Rafi chimed in: “They even have choices at each one of stuff you might like.”

They ran into one of their peers, Vine star Curtis Lepore (7.3 million followers), known for his slapstick videos, near the entrance. “I’ll probably do some swag pics,” said Mr. Lepore, 30, who looked more like a production assistant than a celebrity. “I got some OtterBoxes, which I definitely need to protect my phone, which is my career.”

Matt Kirschner, Talent Resources’ director of celebrity relations, tapped Mr. Lepore on the shoulder and held out an invitation to a Moose Knuckles party (“Anything you need, man, hit me up”). There would be a mechanical beaver there, which seemed perfect for Vine. “It’s ridiculous,” Mr. Lepore said. “Can I take a video of it?”

This sort of zeal gets publicists excited. “A lot of celebrities come and a small portion of them will tweet or Instagram, and we’re always very happy when they do,” said Ms. Feinstein, the publicist, who counted Sarah Silverman and Kellan Lutz among the Hollywood stars who stopped by her gifting suite last weekend. “But social media influencers, they kind of know that’s their job and that’s why they’re being invited.”

Nearby, Olga Kay, a YouTube personality known for her pop-culture parodies (1.4 million subscribers), was showing off ankle boots she got from the CAT booth, which she carried in a bag with the hashtag #earthmovers printed on the side.

In addition to YouTube videos, she started uploading Snapchat Stories from Sundance as a way to extend her reach. She’s been at it for eight years and now feels as if she’s getting Hollywood treatment.

“It’s amazing that there’s a giant presence of YouTube here at Sundance,” she said. “It’s all changing and I feel like the two worlds are colliding, finally.”